Tigers, Cardinals win special playoffs

MATHEWS -- The Thibodaux boys basketball team won’t be traveling when the first round of the playoffs start later this week.

Central Lafourche will.

The Tigers made sure of that with a 73-45 victory on Monday night in a special playoff game that gave them the second seed from District 6-5A.

Central Lafourche will represent 6-5A as the third seed. Both teams finished 8-6 in district.

Thibodaux (16-16) forced the Trojans (12-20) into numerous turnovers and converted them to points. The Tigers led 14-4 at the end of the first quarter, 37-13 at halftime and 55-23 at the end of the third quarter.

"We played hard," Thibodaux coach Tony Clark said. "My kids really wanted this game because they wanted to be home Friday night in the playoffs. We played really good defense, and that led to a lot of easy baskets."

Clark said Thibodaux will likely host Lafayette in the first round on Friday night. The Trojans, a surprise playoff team, will have to travel to Westgate either Thursday or Friday in the first round.

The loss to Thibodaux was the second big home loss in a row for the Trojans. The team lost to Assumption 75-40 last week.

"As a coaching staff, we don’t know," Central Lafourche coach Paul Paille said. "At the beginning of the year, we were picked to be one of the worst teams in the district. Now we look like it. We went 6-2 in the first half of the district, but we have just embarrassed ourselves the last two games. We look like a junior-high team playing a high-school team."

Central Lafourche got 18 points, from Lucas LeBlanc, nine points from Mike Nowlin and eight points from Sam Wilke, but never recovered from the slow start.

"We turned the ball over before we even got into our offense," Paille said. "Some of the turnovers were just bad decisions or weak passes. For some reason, something in lacking."

E.D. WHITE CATHOLIC 50, FRANKLIN 38

At Morgan City, Ben Martin scored 20 points and Cory Adams added 16 as the Cardinals (23-8) beat the Hornets in a special playoff to earn the No. 1 seed out of District 7-3A.

"I really liked our composure tonight," Cardinals coach Jonathan Keife said. "Unlike in previous games against Franklin, we did a good job of settling down, running our offense and playing our style of basketball."

E.D. White will host North Vermillion in the first round of the Class 3A state playoffs on Friday.

"It’s going to be in front of our home fans," Keife said. "We’re going to have a good crowd. Our fans bring us a lot of life. I’m happy my kids will experience that at home."